Fruit bat fellatio and whale snot in roller coaster Ig Nobel awards
The Ig Nobel awards – not to be confused with the real Nobel prizes – is an annual tribute to scientific research that awards scientists whose work makes people laugh first and think later.
The 19th annual event centred on the theme of bacteria and was produced by the scientific humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research.
This year’s Medicine prize went to a group of Dutch scientists who discovered the “positive emotional stress” associated with riding on a roller coaster reduced feelings of shortness of breath among asthma sufferers.
The study involved having 25 students with asthma ride on a roller coaster and then testing their symptoms afterwards.
Other winners included scientists who demonstrated that companies would work more efficiently if they promoted people at random, while the Peace Prize went to a team who discovered that swearing actually reduces pain.
The event featured actual Nobel Laureates handing out prizes at a ceremony in Harvard University, where winners were allowed 60 seconds to deliver their speech– a time limit enforced by an eight-year-old girl.
Editor of the magazine and ceremony host Marc Abrahams said that research was getting weirder all the time, and they like to think the Ig Nobels make the real Nobel Prizes “shine even more brightly”.
- PEACE PRIZE: Swearing increases pain threshold.
Psychologist Richard Stephens and others at Keele University for confirming that swearing relieves pain. Stephens found that volunteers could tolerate more pain if they repeated swear words rather than neutral words.
- PHYSICS PRIZE: Wearing socks over shoes increases grip on ice.
Shoes first, then your socks. Awarded to Lianne Parkin and her team at the University of Otago in New Zealand for demonstrating that people are less likely to slip on icy footpaths if they wear their socks outside their shoes.
- MEDICINE PRIZE: Roller coaster rides reduce asthma symptoms.
Psychologists Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest at the University of Amsterdam share the award for discovering that breathing difficulties brought on by asthma can be alleviated by roller coaster rides.
- ENGINEERING PRIZE: Remote control helicopter used to collect whale ‘snot’.
Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and her team at the Institute of Zoology in London developed a way to collect mucus ejected from whales’ blowholes by attaching petri dishes to the underside of small, remote-controlled helicopters and hovering them overhead.
- BIOLOGY PRIZE The sexual activities of fruit bats.
Went to Gareth Jones at Bristol University and a team of collaborators in China for showing that female short-nosed fruit bats who performed oral sex on their mates copulated for longer.
- ECONOMICS PRIZE: Banks, for their role in the credit crunch.
Awarded jointly to the executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, AIG and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money.
- TRANSPORTATION PRIZE: Slime moulds can design public transport networks.
Mark Fricker and Dan Bebber at Oxford University used slime mould to model an effective railway network.
- MANAGEMENT PRIZE: Random promotions make better business.
Went to Alessandro Pluchino and team at the University of Catania for demonstrating mathematically that companies work more efficiently if staff are promoted at random.
- PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Beards carry germs.
Awarded to Manuel Barbeito at the Industrial Health and Safety Office in Maryland for scientific studies that found microbes cling to beards, making more hirsute men a potential laboratory hazard.
- CHEMISTRY PRIZE: BP and scientists for proving oil and water does mix.
For research in 2005 that overturned the long-held belief that oil and water do not mix, the prize was awarded to researchers at BP among others.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
